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Sales Productivity: Focus On Progress Not Perfection

Have you wondered how others, including your competitors, make things happen rapidly while you struggle just to get through the day?

If you answered “YES” to any of these questions, I’ve got a great video for you to watch.

If you prefer to read, rather than watch, I’ve included an edited transcript for you.

I’d like you to focus on making progress toward achieving your goals, and I want you to think about ways that you can make progress toward achieving your goals each day.

That is one of the key elements to success.

If you think about all the people you know who are successful, they do something, even if it’s a small thing, each and every single day that helps them get closer to achieving their goals.

Now, contrast this with a focus on perfection.

Think about what it would be like if you only did things to perfection each day.

You wake up in the morning and you strive to brush your teeth with perfection. You look at each and every individual tooth, you brush the front and the back of each tooth, and then you try to brush in-between each tooth, top and bottom. Then you take out the floss, and you floss in between each tooth, top and bottom, each day.

Then you walk downstairs and you strive to make the perfect hard-boiled egg.

You may have to do it two or three or four times before it gets to perfection.

Then you strive to pick out the perfect outfit for the day. You match your hair, your clothes, and your shoes, and you make sure they’re all perfect. Make sure they are in neat, crisp, and wrinkle-free.

Then you get in your car, and you drive perfectly to the office, always staying within the speed limit, making the perfect turns, including hand signals, which the Department of Motor Vehicles mandates. You take perfect, most efficient route to get to your office.

Now, we’ve covered part of your daily routine, and already it’s maddening. It was maddening to me just describing it. In your daily routine you strive to make progress.

You get up and brush your teeth, and you do so in a way that is as good as it needs to be in order to clean your teeth and to make sure you don’t have offensive breath.

You put on clothing that is as wrinkle-free as possible given the constraints facing your dry-cleaner and your iron.

Then you get in your car and you drive as best you can to the office, just trying to avoid hurting anyone or yourself on the way over there, while getting to the office as quickly as possible.

This is the way you should approach your work on a daily basis. You should make progress in your work that leads towards achieving your goals.

Of course you want to be the best you can in everything you do, but you do not sacrifice the progress for perfection as you take steps towards reaching your goal.

Think of it this way:

A stand-up comic goes on stage with 12 jokes the first time he’s trying out new material. Probably two of those jokes will be successful the first time. He keeps the two and then he writes 10 more. Then he goes on stage the next time and two more of those jokes are successful. So now he’s got four successful jokes and he goes back and he writes eight more. Two more of those are successful, and on and on, until he’s got a full five minutes, 12 jokes that are highly successful. The next thing he does is write five more minutes of material, until he gets to the point where he’s got a whole one- hour set.

This is what you’re doing as you’re striving to achieve your goals. You need to make sure the work is as good as it can possibly be, but do not focus on perfection to the detriment of making progress, each day.